Salt Lake City Public Art Program

Connecting people to place and place to stories since 1984

Sidewalk Poetry: Senses of Salt Lake City

by

What do you notice when you explore your neighborhood, the things you see, hear, smell, or feel? What stays with you when you spend time along the Jordan River Parkway, hike the Bonneville Shoreline, wander through City Creek Canyon, or visit other cherished public spaces in Salt Lake City?

For the Sidewalk Poetry: Senses of Salt Lake City project, the Salt Lake City Public Art Program chose 20 short poems inspired by the prompt, “How do you experience Salt Lake City?” from 20 Salt Lake City based writers.  The project invited writing in both English and Spanish, celebrating the beauty of the city’s urban and natural environments and honoring the diverse communities and individuals who call Salt Lake City home.

The 20 selected writers are John Boyack, Paulina Burnside, Nicolas Contreras, Pablo Cruz-Ayala, Tim Glenn, Kelly Goff, Holly Henderson, Aristotle Johns, Jasmine Khaliq, Cash Mendenhall, Jack Myhre, Arianna Rees, Joe Roberts, Nan Seymour, Samantha Shelley, Zachary Schwing, Keira Shae, Samantha da Silva, César Urbizu-Rodarte, and Susan J. Wurtzburg.

Photo 1.1 – 1.2: Jasmin Khaliq
Photo 2.1 – 2.2: Aristotle Johns
Photo 3.1 – 3.2:  Arianna Rees
Photo 4.1 – 4.2:  Samantha da Silva
Photo 5.1 – 5.2:  Kelly Goff
Photo 6.1 – 6.2: Holly Henderson
Photo 7.1 – 7.2:  Zach Schwing
Photo 8.1 – 8.2:  Jack Myhre

This project was made possible through the Salt Lake City Arts Council’s Public Art Program, with support from the Salt Lake City Streets department, community stakeholders including current Utah Poet Laureate, Lisa Bickmore, Artes de México en Utah’s Poetry and Literature Coordinator, Aaron Garcia, and fellow juror for Sor Juana Poetry Contest, Lina Vega-Morrison, and the Salt Lake Art Design Board.

8 of the 20 poems have been stamped across Salt Lake City. The remaining poems will be stamped in the Spring of 2026.

Photo credit: Salt Lake City Corp

 

The mountain is so pale, today--

Any color


You suggest,

It takes

Located: 1775 W New Hampshire Ave

Jasmine Khaliq is a Pakistani Mexican poet born and raised in Northern California. She holds a BA from San Francisco State University and an MFA from the University of Washington, Seattle. Currently, Jasmine is a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City where she lives with her partner Victor and Lucy, their beautiful dog.

clouds will hold themselves above

this ground where you are

another sort of sky

Located: Northshore Dr & Northview St

Aristotle Johns is a writer from Colorado. He lives in Salt Lake City, where he is pursuing a PhD in creative writing. Aristotle owes all and anything he is to his family and best friends.

Downtown blushes heartbeat red

at the nip of winter,

infant flakes race the train

Located: 500 S 1200 E

Located: 600 S 1200 E

Arianna Rees is a social media manager and writer who grew up in Cache Valley but now calls Salt Lake City home. When she isn't staring at a blank screen, willing words to appear, she can be found hiking in the Cottonwoods, enjoying a good film at The Broadway, or spending too much money at The King’s English.

Rooted here, heart whispers ‘home."

Located: Rosewood Park, 1400 N 1200 W

Samantha da Silva (b.1978) is a Brazilian-born artist based in Salt Lake City, UT. Shaped by migration and a desire to create, she's moved over 40 times due to natural disasters and life circumstances. Her large-scale relief sculptures, resembling topographic maps and cracked earth, explore themes of belonging and resourcefulness. An educator, she's taught globally and featured in Architectural Digest and HGTV.

The Oquirrhs in the distance

Held aloft by a corral of clouds.

Quickly now before the wind picks up.

Located: 800 W Lucy Ave

Kelly Goff is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Salt Lake City. Goff’s art practice observes how women are treated and how we experience the world. Consistent themes of exploration include power dynamics, domesticity, beauty standards and female reproductive health. The human body figures prominently in her work. Her sculptural and installation work has been exhibited locally and out of state.

Even the mountains are cheering you on.

Located: 9th Ave & J St

Holly Henderson is an artist and writer living in Salt Lake City. She creates mixed media artwork that combines words and imagery to tell a story of the shared human experience and connectedness we all experience. She is greatly inspired by family, nature, life, and love.

Dry dust salt sea westwind,

Sun chase dew rise scrub oak,

And wet pine give race.


Located: 2577 E Nottingham Way

Zach Schwingworked for almost a decade as a bicycle messenger in downtown Salt Lake City. He is currently writing and illustrating a work of hyper-modernist fiction featuring his fictional messenger persona “Hotspur.” Publication of the first novella is slated for summer/autumn 2024.

quiet eyes gaze west, there,

the jagged mountains slash through purple skies


Located: 2233 S 2000 E

Jack Myhre grew up in the shadow of the Rwenzori Mountains before periods in central North Carolina and England slowly wore him down with their empty horizons. His heart yearned for elevation again and he found his way back to jagged contour lines, this time in Utah, where he spends his time taking pictures and making pasta, pizza, and pottery.

Humpback Arcoíris – rock rojo, montaña mauve, cerulean nos lleva sky-high /

Rainbow Humpback – red rock, mauve mountain, cerulean carries us sky-high

Susan J. Wurtzburg received 1st place in the Elizabeth M. Campbell Poetry Award, 2022. She was a semi-finalist in the Crab Creek Review Poetry Competition 2022, and in the Naugatuck River Review's 14th Narrative Poetry Contest, 2022. Wurtzburg was a Community Poet in the Spring 2023 Poetry Workshop, Westminster College. Her poetry may be found online and in print.

Escucho tu constante murmurar apaciguar el bullicio, sonorizas mi paz rio Jordan /

I hear your constant murmuring calm the bustle, you sound my peace Jordan river

Born and raised in Tampico, México, father of three tender souls, César Urbizu-Rodarte immigrated two decades ago to Salt Lake City; he is a musician and a writer by conviction and a postman by career, a lover of mountain trails accompanied by his dogs, and at home, a tired soccer player enjoying a book with his cats purring on his lap.

Dragonflies summon me to apricot skies

As the river cuts the ribbon

Samantha Shelley is a writer and content creator from Essex, England. She loves cats, the library, and swimming in mountain lakes.

You are Here.

You’ll find:

Human voice, a Sacred wild,

Broad streets &

Bearded grain.

Keira Shae (M. Ed.) is a deaf Salt Lake author. She published a memoir, How the Light Gets In, with BCC in 2018. It chronicles her childhood with an uneducated mother addicted to methamphetamines and the Utah foster family that changed her life. She is a counselor for children and a proud mother of three sons.

A basin yearning to be full again,

a great lake dreaming herself whole again.

Nan Seymour is a lake-facing poet who has led community vigils on behalf of the imperiled Great Salt Lake throughout the last three Utah State legislative sessions. She assembled the praise poem called Irreplaceable, a collective love letter to the lake containing over 400 individual voices.

To the mountains, our city

must seem a herd of hills

that somehow hum and shine.

Joe Roberts lives in Salt Lake City. His work has been featured in Tiny Seed Press, Haikuniverse, petrichor magazine, and the Rocky Mountain Revival Podcast. His first chapbook, Anathema, will be published in 2024. With his free time, Joe writes music reviews for SLUG Magazine, takes communion at local coffee shops, and hikes the Wasatch Front with his partner, Brooke.

An emerald band between thirst and drowning /

Between narratives

Between homelands

Cash Mendenhall is a senior at West High School and was born and raised in Salt Lake City. He is interested in adapting our city to confront climate change and an increasingly tenuous relationship with our natural resources.

Among peaks

I am a brother and a queen

a dreaming anticline

inciting revelry

& peace

Tim Glenn is a museum professional and cultural sector enthusiast from Salt Lake City. He spends most of his time thinking about what he said in therapy the week before. He maintains a creative practice that currently revolves around single panel cartoons, mildly humorous (and mildly serious) poems, and drawing every coffee shop in SLC. In the past, Tim has also found success writing fiction, strongly worded letters, songs, typo-filled emails, and Dad-jokes.

Undocumented, yet undeterred,

In every footstep, a story conferred.

Pablo Cruz-Ayala explores the intersections between their Mexican/American heritage, and status as an undocumented immigrant through visual art. Currently studying Biomedical Engineering and Painting at the University of Utah, after which they hope to pursue a medical degree. They aim to continue nurturing and strengthening professional art and stem resources in Utah through community and research.

A cement valley with a blossom

always waiting to burst over its desert sky.

Nicolas Contreras is an American poet and artist, originally from Mar del Plata, Argentina — though He's called Utah his home for many years. As someone who values the work it takes to make a place home, he was most excited that the selections for this project would be in public spaces, for all to come across them and enjoy.

The Range eyes my

southbound course.

Sneakers are roots that move.

Paulina Burnside was born and raised in the high desert mountains of northern New Mexico educated near the U.S./Mexican borderlands. Exploring spaces by foot, bicycle, or imagination takes up most of her time.

Love is a sapling's effort

Canvas, concrete

A park bench

The corner fleur

Con ganas de conocerte

(Looking forward to meeting you)

Loving father, poet, and children's book author. Born in Seattle, John Boyack relocated to Salt Lake City in 2001 and enrolled at the University of Utah earning BA degrees in English and Political Science, and a master's degree in public administration. He loves reading, hiking, and creating with his daughter Hattie and thanks Miriam, his lightning bolt, for inspiring this poe.

Ballpark Neighborhood Murals: In the Flow

by

Over the summer of 2025, the Ballpark neighborhood was transformed into a vibrant open-air gallery through the creation of ten new murals. Each mural emerged from a unique collaboration between a local business and a local artist selected from the Public Art Program’s Pre-Qualified Artist Pool. Business owners offered their walls as creative canvases, while artists designed site-specific works that captured the people, stories, and distinctive character of the neighborhood.

Funded by the Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) and programmed by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the initiative infused the neighborhood with new energy, color, and creativity. The project celebrated and strengthened the artistic spirit already thriving in the community, uplifting small businesses, showcasing local talent, and cultivating a deeper sense of place. Together, these ten murals formed a cohesive and dynamic collection that reflects what makes the Ballpark neighborhood truly one of a kind.

Traci O’Very Covey is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose work spans painting, murals, mosaics, art glass, and metal sculpture. Inspired by nature, human connection, and “the grace and joy of everyday,” her art celebrates beauty in the familiar. Her work is featured in Salt Lake County’s permanent collection and in exhibitions at the Springville Museum of Art, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Traci’s large-scale murals and sculptures appear in public and corporate spaces, including the Eccles Theater, Salt Lake International Airport, and Asante Hospital in Oregon. A recipient of the University of Utah College of Fine Arts 2025 Distinguished Alumni Legacy Award, she is Artist in Residence at Huntsman Cancer Institute and maintains an active studio practice in Salt Lake City.

Photos by Logan Sorenson

Ballpark Neighborhood Murals: Adaption

by

Over the summer of 2025, the Ballpark neighborhood was transformed into a vibrant open-air gallery through the creation of ten new murals. Each mural emerged from a unique collaboration between a local business and a local artist selected from the Public Art Program’s Pre-Qualified Artist Pool. Business owners offered their walls as creative canvases, while artists designed site-specific works that captured the people, stories, and distinctive character of the neighborhood.

Funded by the Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) and programmed by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the initiative infused the neighborhood with new energy, color, and creativity. The project celebrated and strengthened the artistic spirit already thriving in the community, uplifting small businesses, showcasing local talent, and cultivating a deeper sense of place. Together, these ten murals formed a cohesive and dynamic collection that reflects what makes the Ballpark neighborhood truly one of a kind.

Joseph Toney is a visual artist operating out of Salt Lake City, UT. Fueled by the vastness of America’s mountain west, his illustrative painting style reimagines the landscape. With a painstaking attention to detail, he creates abstracted memoryscapes as complex murals and studio works. His work can be found all across the world in private collections and as commercial offerings in the outdoor industry.

Photos by Logan Sorenson

Ballpark Neighborhood Murals: Urban Indian Center of Salt Lake

by

Over the summer of 2025, the Ballpark neighborhood was transformed into a vibrant open-air gallery through the creation of ten new murals. Each mural emerged from a unique collaboration between a local business and a local artist selected from the Public Art Program’s Pre-Qualified Artist Pool. Business owners offered their walls as creative canvases, while artists designed site-specific works that captured the people, stories, and distinctive character of the neighborhood.

Funded by the Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) and programmed by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the initiative infused the neighborhood with new energy, color, and creativity. The project celebrated and strengthened the artistic spirit already thriving in the community, uplifting small businesses, showcasing local talent, and cultivating a deeper sense of place. Together, these ten murals formed a cohesive and dynamic collection that reflects what makes the Ballpark neighborhood truly one of a kind.

Roots Art Kollective is an artist collective composed of Luis Novoa, Alan Ochoa, and Miguel Galaz. We believe that using public art can redefine the cultural space that we embody through the use of symbols such as: calligraphy, colors, and patterns as ways to represent the cultural quilt of our communities.

Photos by Logan Sorenson

Ballpark Neighborhood Murals: The Engine Block

by

Over the summer of 2025, the Ballpark neighborhood was transformed into a vibrant open-air gallery through the creation of ten new murals. Each mural emerged from a unique collaboration between a local business and a local artist selected from the Public Art Program’s Pre-Qualified Artist Pool. Business owners offered their walls as creative canvases, while artists designed site-specific works that captured the people, stories, and distinctive character of the neighborhood.

Funded by the Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) and programmed by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the initiative infused the neighborhood with new energy, color, and creativity. The project celebrated and strengthened the artistic spirit already thriving in the community, uplifting small businesses, showcasing local talent, and cultivating a deeper sense of place. Together, these ten murals formed a cohesive and dynamic collection that reflects what makes the Ballpark neighborhood truly one of a kind.

Trevor Dahl (aka Good Happy Stuff) is a Salt Lake City–based visual artist interested in creating contemporary mythologies. His surrealistic, whimsical artwork can be recognized by its distinct shape-language and color palettes, bringing a fresh & unique approach to American Western motifs. His public art often incorporates history, local landscapes, and culture to create place-specific murals that create deeper meaning for residents. Trevor has created several murals around Utah and beyond, and maintains a fine art practice in his Capitol Hill studio.

Photos by Logan Sorenson

Ballpark Neighborhood Murals: Mammoth

by

Over the summer of 2025, the Ballpark neighborhood was transformed into a vibrant open-air gallery through the creation of ten new murals. Each mural emerged from a unique collaboration between a local business and a local artist selected from the Public Art Program’s Pre-Qualified Artist Pool. Business owners offered their walls as creative canvases, while artists designed site-specific works that captured the people, stories, and distinctive character of the neighborhood.

Funded by the Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) and programmed by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the initiative infused the neighborhood with new energy, color, and creativity. The project celebrated and strengthened the artistic spirit already thriving in the community, uplifting small businesses, showcasing local talent, and cultivating a deeper sense of place. Together, these ten murals formed a cohesive and dynamic collection that reflects what makes the Ballpark neighborhood truly one of a kind.

Isaac Hastings is a Salt Lake City based visual artist, muralist, and printmaker whose work blends mythology, symbolism, and vivid dimensional design. With more than 15 years of experience in screen printing and public art, Hastings has produced murals across Utah, including the large-scale Mammoth mural in the Ballpark neighborhood. a piece that celebrates endurance, creativity, and the evolving spirit of the city.

Photos by Logan Sorenson

Ballpark Neighborhood Murals: Take Me Out to the Ballpark

by

Over the summer of 2025, the Ballpark neighborhood was transformed into a vibrant open-air gallery through the creation of ten new murals. Each mural emerged from a unique collaboration between a local business and a local artist selected from the Public Art Program’s Pre-Qualified Artist Pool. Business owners offered their walls as creative canvases, while artists designed site-specific works that captured the people, stories, and distinctive character of the neighborhood.

Funded by the Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) and programmed by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the initiative infused the neighborhood with new energy, color, and creativity. The project celebrated and strengthened the artistic spirit already thriving in the community, uplifting small businesses, showcasing local talent, and cultivating a deeper sense of place. Together, these ten murals formed a cohesive and dynamic collection that reflects what makes the Ballpark neighborhood truly one of a kind.

Smock & Roll is a muraling team made up of Alli VanKleeck and Caroline Kane. Designing with bold, graphic styles and a passion for color, their work is mostly inspired by flora, fauna, and fables.

Photos by Logan Sorenson

Ballpark Neighborhood Mural: The Seabirds Greeted the Moon

by

Over the summer of 2025, the Ballpark neighborhood was transformed into a vibrant open-air gallery through the creation of ten new murals. Each mural emerged from a unique collaboration between a local business and a local artist selected from the Public Art Program’s Pre-Qualified Artist Pool. Business owners offered their walls as creative canvases, while artists designed site-specific works that captured the people, stories, and distinctive character of the neighborhood.

Funded by the Salt Lake City Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA) and programmed by the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the initiative infused the neighborhood with new energy, color, and creativity. The project celebrated and strengthened the artistic spirit already thriving in the community, uplifting small businesses, showcasing local talent, and cultivating a deeper sense of place. Together, these ten murals formed a cohesive and dynamic collection that reflects what makes the Ballpark neighborhood truly one of a kind.

Caro Nilsson, born in 1993 in Vancouver, Washington, creates paintings rooted in impressionism and a deep relationship with the land. Her work explores the connection between contrasting forces—grief and hope, shadow and light—framed through the landscapes where these emotional and natural dynamics unfold. In public art, she centers ecology and belonging, reminding viewers that our built environments are part of larger ecosystems and that we are connected to both place and one another. Caro holds a B.A. in Fine Art with a Distinguished Major in Printmaking and a B.S. in Architecture from the University of Virginia, and she has completed more than 50 murals. Now based in Salt Lake City, she continues to focus on community building and environmental stewardship, including her 2025 exhibition For Those Who Bear Witness at the Northeastern Nevada Museum, which examined air quality in the Mountain West.

Photos by Logan Sorenson